


If the Lady Insists

by Agrotera



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Delightful Awkwardness, F/M, New Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 15:17:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10311113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agrotera/pseuds/Agrotera
Summary: Evelyn Trevelyan has two problems: fallen arches and a crush on her Commander.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this one-shot several years ago. Then, I deleted my account. Now I'm putting it back up under a new name!

Evelyn’s feet ached. She undid the ties and straps of her tall boots and gingerly slid them off her feet; they were tight in the calf, too tight, and offered hardly any arch support at all.

She groaned, longing for sleep but dreading it, too. After witnessing how every moment she delayed, how every second she paused to ease the howls of protestation in her poor feet or catch a few extra minutes of sleep another life was lost to the demon horde, she found she couldn’t pause. Truth be told, she could barely sleep as it was.

She was the Inquisitor, she reminded herself. Thedas needed her, fallen arches and all, and she could not forsake their need. And the first step toward that end was reading Josephine’s reports.

So, her feet ached. And she walked on, slaying demons and reading reports.

She sank back into her sagging cot that smelled overpoweringly of mildew and closed her eyes. Only for a moment, she promised herself, and then she would get back to Josephine’s reports. Only a moment.

She woke to a soft rapping against the rigid canvas of her tent. It wasn’t that the knock was loud, exactly, but that the camp beyond its boundaries was so quiet. She stared about in wide-eyed confusion and found that her tent, which had been bathed in the long, yellow light of late evening when she last closed her eyes, was dark, its interior lit in ghostly shadows by the cook fires in the clearing beyond.

The light tapping came again, followed by a muffled, “Inquisitor?”

“Yes, yes, just a moment.” She threw herself from the cot and cast frantically around for her boots. Wouldn’t do for the troops to see her barefoot, she thought. No, no, that would be terribly undignified. Evelyn strode ever to appear dignified above all else, for she knew in that one particular trait was sorely lacking, but feared the troops and her companions knew the truth: it was a farce. She was a farce, the whole Inquisition was a farce, and sooner or later (hopefully, Maker willing, later), all would see her as she really was.

She tripped on the traitorous boot instead and fell heavily against her small secretary desk. She swore fluidly under her breath.

The insistent voice at the tent opening, no longer content to wait, poked its head around the flap. “Inquisitor, are you quite alright?”

“Oh, for the love of—yes! Fine, just fine! Patience, please!” She finally slapped a hand onto the desk’s paper-strewn surface and trailed a thin slip of fire from the tip of her finger into the dark lantern at the desk’s edge.

Cullen blinked rapidly at the sudden brightness. Evelyn jumped nearly a foot into the air.

“Flames, Commander, I thought you were one of the new recruits! What is it? Are we attacked? Oh, Blight it, where’s my staff, it was here only a moment ago—”

“Were you asleep?”

“Was I asleep?” She laughed haltingly, hand at her mouth and a hint of mania tingeing her voice. “The Inquisitor, asleep? Oh no, sir, you must be mistaken. Can’t sleep, no, who knows when next a fucking demon will claw its way out of the earth.” She sighed and rubbed the heels of her palms into her eyes. “In fact, yes. I was asleep. Deeply asleep. And if it’s not _terribly_  urgent, I’d like to get back to that. Unless you’d like to join me? But you’ll have to take the floor. The cot, uh, thing—,” she waved generally in its direction. “It’s very small. And smelly.”

“I’m afraid—,” the Commander cleared his throat and ruffled several sheets of paper in her direction, letting himself into the tent. The flap fell closed behind him. “I’m afraid it _is_  urgent.”

“Define urgent.” Evelyn found the rickety folding camp chair behind her and let herself fall into it. She ran her hands through her hair, trying to tame its midnight escape from her usual practical bun. It was hardy worth the effort—her dark curls did as they liked, and they liked to cause trouble.

“I received word from Leliana’s forward scouts that—“ He began, fiddling with the thick sheets in front of him, squinting at the scrawl before him.

Evelyn propped her elbow on her knee and slowly sank her head onto it, using the heel of her palm to massage the suddenly pounding spot between her eyes. She motioned for him to hurry it up.

“Right. Templars seized a quarry in the Emprise and are using it to mine red lyrium.” The words ran out of him like water from a pierced dam.

Evelyn hissed a breath out between her teeth. “That’s just what we need.” She pulled her head up from her hand and regarded him through the unbound strands of her hair. “What can we do about it right now, if anything?”

Cullen chewed his bottom lip. The very tips of his ears were pink, Evelyn noticed, and his cheeks ever so slightly red. “At this very moment? Nothing. But if I might counsel you—“

“You might.” Evelyn grimaced and pulled an aching foot into her lap, rubbing her arches.

“The scouts arrived early. We weren’t supposed to meet them for…” He trailed off.

It was some few moments before she noticed. “What is it? Have I got something in my hair?”

He shook his head as if clearing cobwebs from its rafters. Blush climbed his throat. “My apologies. I lost to Dorian at cards and he made me share a bladder of this utterly foul wine he picked up off a dead Venatori soldier because he said it reminded him of home, and—“

Evelyn shook her head and switched to the other offending foot. “I don’t know why you play with Dorian. He gets all his tricks from Varric, you know, and you can’t trust a prince of the merchant caste, whatever he might tell you.” She met his eyes then and grinned. “You were going to counsel me?”

Cullen coughed again. He appeared to be sweating. “Double-time march. Before the sun, with all the horses we can spare. We’ll leave a few men behind to break camp and return our campaign equipment to Skyhold. We ride hard, we should make the Emprise in no more than a week’s time.” He paused. “Are your feet hurting you?”

“We?” Evelyn said absentmindedly, and cracked the knuckles on her hands, counting through the days in her head.

“Yes. No! I meant—you, Dorian, Sera, Blackwall. Only, I was hoping—Samson might be there. I don’t want to miss this chance and let him slip through our grasp. I’d like to be handle this personally.”

“Relay the marching orders to the troops, then. We’ll leave before dawn, as you suggested.”

“Inquisitor.” Cullen cut a brief bow and turned to stride out of the tent.

“But come back here when you’re done. And bring the Wicked Grace deck.”

“…Inquisitor.” He turned and left.

Evelyn slumped across the secretary. Another forced march, then. She counted on her fingers, then in her head. It would be at least three weeks, maybe four, before she could return to Skyhold—three weeks before she could have a bath that didn’t happen furtively in some frigid mountain stream. Maker, how she missed hot water.

 _Blast_. She picked up her forgotten quill and rolled it between her fingers. Best to finish Josephine’s reports before retiring to bed. It was just that she was so tired, and—

Evelyn woke to an earthquake. She jolted in her chair and nearly fell out of it, only to find that the shaking had been a hand on her shoulder trying to rouse her. She looked up into brown eyes turned amber in lamplight, concern buttressing their corners.

“…quisitor?” Cullen said again.

“Oh, you’re back. Or is this a dream?”  She asked sleepily. “Why are you smirking?”

“I don’t smirk. Come, you should be in bed.”

“I don’t want to be in bed, I want to play Wicked Grace. And you smirk all the time,” Evelyn huffed. “I’m not a wayward child begging for one last story before bedtime.” She sat up straight, shook her head, and forced a toothy smile. “See? I’m awake.”

“We have an early march, as you well know. You really should—“

“Cullen.” She stopped him short and held him in her regard. He dropped his hand from her shoulder.

When he smiled, it was pained, sad. “I know.” He shook his head.

“I just want to talk.”

“And play Wicked Grace,” he amended.

“Exactly so,” she said, and smiled. Genuinely.

It had been several weeks since he had kissed her on the battlements. It was sudden, his chapped lips on hers, his tongue hot in her mouth, the press of his hips against her own. It had been sudden and wholly welcome, but ill-timed; she’d had to leave on campaign the next morning, something about unrest in the Emerald Graves, and it was only now, when she and her companions met up with the bulk of the Inquisition’s forces with the intent to push on to the Exalted Plains, that she had been able to see him again.

She kept the memory of their small, shared kiss on the battlements close to her chest. She reviewed it every evening before she fell asleep and every morning when she awoke. It was one of the few things she had in this mad new world that was entirely her own, and she cherished it. She was terrified to ruin it with some foolish, ill-conceived action now.

But she had to admit, she was wanted more—more memories, more kisses, more callused hands at the small of her back, only this time with fewer garments in the way. And she wanted to play Wicked Grace, because playing cards was normal, and she was normal, glowing green hand with the power to tear the very fabric of their world asunder be damned.

Cullen cast about the room. “You don’t have a table.”

“When you think about it, the floor is really one big table.” Evelyn moved from her chair to the floor beside her cot and patted the ground across from her. “Look, I’ve got rugs and everything, just like a real important person. It’s not even that uncomfortable.”

Cullen assessed the floor with a dubious eye.

“Has your position made you so soft you won’t even sit on the _ground_ , Commander?”

“I didn’t say—“

 “And the breastplate, you’ll have to lose the breastplate. Can’t properly play cards with all that clanking. It’s distracting, an unfair advantage.”

“Now, hold on—“

 “Those pauldrons, especially. I don’t know how you stand them. I’m allergic to feathers, you know. I wouldn’t be able to stop sneezing. Who made those for you, anyway? We should fire them.”

Cullen was halfway through unbuckling his breastplate when he paused and pointed an accusing finger in her direction. “We haven’t even started playing, and I’m already disrobing?”

“It’s only fair.”

“What’s fair about that?”

“I’m the Inquisitor.” Evelyn gestured expansively at her tent. “I’ve got the big tent; I get to decide what’s fair.”

Cullen sat himself across from her and began to shuffle the cards. “Can’t argue with that, can I?” He smiled.

The scar across his mouth tugged at his lip when he smiled. It added an unintended acid to his words that made her chest hurt. But in a good way.

Evelyn grinned in return. “Not unless you’d like to be held up under charges of insubordination.”

Cullen dished out the cards with a hand more practiced than she expected. “I wouldn’t mind being held up.” And he smirked, the bastard.

A great pit opened in Evelyn’s stomach and all of her organs and thoughts and void, even her _breath_ , went tumbling into it. “Is-is that so,” she stammered. She stared pointedly at her cards. Wine made him bold—she’d have to remember that, and carry more wine.

Cullen only smiled. It was not often he got one up on her, and doing so now made him inordinately proud—proud, and reckless. He lost the first three hands.

“Tsk tsk, Commander,” Evelyn chided him. “You’re lucky this isn’t strip Wicked Grace.”

He gave her a funny half smile. “Am I?”

Evelyn blushed furiously. Her next hand, she pulled the Angel of Death from the top of the deck. “Ah ha, cards down!”

Cullen spread his cards before them and showed four Songs.

“My goodness, Commander,” Evelyn gave him a tight smile. “I do believe you are a terrible cheat.”

“You insult my honor, Inquisitor.”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t pull that Song of Autumn from the discard pile; I put it there myself not three draws ago!”

“Did you? Hm, strange, but I don’t remember it quite like that.”

“Oh, you’re _terrible_. Does Dorian know you cheat at cards?”

“Does he know? Madam Inquisitor, cheating is the only way to beat Dorian at cards because that’s the only way he knows how to play—by cheating.”

“And where did an honorable man such as yourself learn such deception?”

“Contrary to what recent events might indicate, Circle towers are often quite boring places to spend one’s youth. Excluding the possessions, of course.”

“We had no trouble finding ways to amuse ourselves in the Ostwick Circle.” She tossed her cards into the discard pile and arched an eyebrow.

“Is that so?”

Evelyn took a breath. “Cullen—“ she began. She picked nervously at her fingernails, staring at the floor.

He took one of her long-fingered hands in his own callused one and pulled it to his cheek. “I most sincerely hope you’re not about apologize…” He leaned into her hand, drawing it down his cheek to his lips. Evelyn shivered to feel his rough stubble against her fingertips. “…For your long and entirely necessary absence from Skyhold.”

She cupped his chin in her hand. He kissed her palm. Her skin was bitter ink and dry paper on his tongue.

She cleared her throat. “I was going to ask you to remove your undershirt.”

He chuckled as he sat back on his heels and drew his shirt over his head.

Evelyn poked at it skeptically with her index finger when he dropped it to the floor beside them. “Do you know there are holes in this?”

“I’ve been too distracted to repair them.”

“By what?”

“By _whom_ , really.”

She leaned across the cards strewn between them and drew his mouth to hers until their lips were but a hair’s breadth apart.

“I don’t want to be your Inquisitor,” she whispered. “I want to hear you say my name.”

He breathed “Evelyn” against her lips and the gust of his breath was a summer storm in her head, rising fast and bright and violent, breaking up in rain and thunderous claps of lightning over parched, rolling hills.

She covered his mouth with hers and forgot for long moments how to breathe, resenting that she even had to. He slid an arm about her waist and pulled her into his lap.

“Are you certain you want to do this now?” He asked.

She drew her thumb across his lips. “Play cards? I always want to play cards.”

“You’re impossible. Stand for me, please.”

She did, and he moved away from her briefly to tie the tent flap closed.

“I see you’ve learned from our little rendezvous on the ramparts, Commander.”

He laughed despite himself. “I about ringed that poor man’s neck and threw him over the walls.”

Evelyn turned her back to him and began undoing the many hook-and-eye clasps on the front of her doublet. She smiled to herself at the memory. “I would have let you. Maker, I would have helped you hide the body.”

Large hands stilled her own. His chest was hot against her back, his heart a staccato drumbeat behind her own. “May I?” He asked.

She leaned back against him and nodded, closing her eyes.

Several seconds later, her eyes still closed, she noticed he had made very little progress on the clasps of her doublet. His hands were shaking.

“Why are these blasted things so complicated?” He mumbled to himself.

Evelyn turned to face him in his arms. “Here,” she said, and the clasps parted swiftly beneath her hands. She turned her face to his and smiled, proud, with her hands behind her back. She wiggled her shoulders for him. “This is the fun part, anyway.”

He buried his face in her messy hair behind her ear. “Maker, you’re lovely.”

She giggled against his neck. “I must smell terribly. It’s been so long since I’ve had a real bath, I can’t even smell myself anymore. That can’t be a good sign.”

“You smell like horses,” he said, and removed the doublet from her right shoulder.

She snorted at that. “I do not!”

“And you smell like sweat.” He removed the doublet from her left shoulder.

“You’re very bad at this, the sweet-talking. Do you know that?”

“And you smell like _lyrium,_ ” he hissed, and threw the doublet into the shadows behind them.

His growl against her neck turned her legs to jelly.

“Best of all,” he said, as he began to leave light, sucking kisses down her neck. “You smell like Evelyn.”

She twined her arms about his neck and wrapped her fingers in his short hair. He held her about the waist, almost chaste in his touching, except that, of course, she wasn’t wearing a top. “Why don’t we take this to the cot,” she said, and slowly walked them backwards.

Her heel caught the edge of her discarded boot, then the other foot did the same, and suddenly they were falling. “Ah, fuck!” She yelled, clinging to him.

They landed with a crash on the narrow cot. It buckled with an ominous crack. Cullen started laughing.

“That’s it!” She kicked savagely at the offending boot from where she lied crushed beneath him and managed to send it tumbling into the darkness beneath her desk. “I hate those things.”

Cullen wiped tears from his eyes. “I think we broke your bed.” He could hardly catch a breath for his laughter.

“Oh, this blighted—How will I explain this to my guard when they come to take down my tent?” Evelyn fumed, briefly scheming for crafty ways to explain the damage.

They began to slide to the side.

Cullen caught her up in his arms and put his mouth to her ear. “Tell them you were playing cards,” he said before they tumbled to the floor.

She landed hard on top of him, driving the air from his lungs with an errant elbow. She leapt from him as if he was on fire. “Oh, Maker, Cullen, I’m so sorry! This is going all wrong.”

He wheezed in response.

She lay down and rested her head on his shoulder. “When I said we made our own fun at Ostwick, I didn’t mean _recently_.”

He rolled into her and gasped laughter into the dip of her shoulder. It started as a chuckle, but soon shook his whole body. Her heart clenched against the low rumble of his laughter vibrating through her chest. “How long ago was that, exactly?” He asked.

“Let a girl keep some secrets, Cullen. I beg you.”

Evelyn gasped as her put her on her back.

He unhooked her belt and unlatched the catch of her breeches. “You’ll pardon me for saying I’d rather—,” he rested one large palm just below her navel, “—wring them out of you.”

Evelyn giggled to keep herself from laughing like a maniac. Maker, what a line. “What has happened to my blushing Commander?” She asked.

“I don’t blush,” growled against her collarbone.

“That’s a patent falsehood if I’ve ever—oh! Oh. Oh my.”

“Evelyn.”

“Ye-e-s?” She gasp, her breath hitching on the word.

“You seem…” He took her nipple in his mouth and nicked it gently with his teeth. “Nervous.”

“Me, nervous? No, hah, no. Never. Oh _Maker_ , keep doing that.”

“If the lady insists.”

“She insists. Quite insistently.”

“Would the Lady Inquisitor like to keep her breeches on?”

“The Lady—ah, that feels, _flames_ —no, the Lady hates her breeches. It’s just—,” She took a deep breath and shook as she exhaled it against his shoulder.

He stilled his hand and met her eyes.

Maker, but he was beautiful.

“It’s just—oh, this is hideously embarrassing.” She threw her arm across her eyes.

He raised a brow and laid himself down beside her, breathing raggedly.

She breathed out and turned to look at his stupid, perfect face. “I don’t—I’ve never come. With anyone. And if I don’t, with you, I mean, I don’t want you to feel—well, it’s a not a reflection on your, er, skills. It’s a problem with me.”

He smiled. It was so soft, so kind, that her stomach ached with it. “Don’t say that.”

“I—what?”

“It’s not a problem. There’s nothing wrong with you. Do you…” He trailed off, looking over her shoulder for a moment before meeting her eyes again. Evelyn’s chest heaved. “…Want me to try?”

Evelyn closed her eyes and rolled onto her back. “No. Maybe? I want to enjoy what little time we have together. I don’t want to be … worried. About that.”

“What would you like me to do?” He played idly with one of her loose curls, winding it about his index finger.

“I want you to kiss me.”

“Done.”

“And I want you to fix my bed.”

He laughed at that and pulled her into his arms. “I’ll see what I can do.”

She kissed him. It was sweet, deep. It took her breath, and she found she didn’t miss it one bit. It wasn’t quite what she wanted, but it was better than she’d imagined.

Evelyn woke to a strong hand on her shoulder and mug of tea in her face, feeling more rested than she had in weeks.

“Good morning.” His voice was late summer honey on a blisteringly hot day, bright and warm.

She took the mug, pulled a boot from beneath her head, and smiled. “It is, isn’t it?”

“Near enough.” He grinned. “Will you be ready to ride soon?”

“I will, but I can’t promise I’ll give it my full attention.”

“I might be offended if you did.” He kissed her brow and stood to leave, his pauldrons rustling.

She sat up to watch him leave, cradling the mug against her chest. It smelled like ginger, cloves, and honey. She stared into her tea for a few moments longer than she should have, carefully not thinking about their evening together. She held the memory at arm’s length, as if scared of damaging its pristine coherence. Then, she tucked it away and smiled, just a moment, to herself.

She rose to greet the day.

 

#

 

There’s the way things are, then there’s the way things should be.

Evelyn should have lived a simple life—years wiled away in the Ostwick tower, little but books, the templars, and other mages for company. It hadn’t been the life she’d dreamed of as a girl staring out the tall windows of her family’s minor but nonetheless impressive estate, and certainly wasn’t the life she wanted, but she had grown accustomed to it, had even been well on her way to accepting it. 

Evelyn had found that not only did she rather like scholarship, but that it suited her, too. She had always been a precocious child, pestering her parents with questions inappropriate for her age when other, normal children would have been out of doors playing with balls, chasing barn cats, or, were they a boy, suffering through interminable lessons in swordmanship. She would throw herself in a huff at her long-suffering mother’s feet and beg to know the answers to impossible questions, like where the moon came from or why fire was hot. Her mother, taking respite from the rigors of chasing children, men, and the estate’s few staff in knitting, would sigh, and shrug, and tell young Evelyn that only the Maker knew the answers to such things. Perhaps if Evelyn were a good girl—minded her manners, listened to her parents, tried her very best at all her lessons—she could ask Him when she was at His side.

This pleased Evelyn not at all. Denied the answers or engagement a curious mind such as hers required, Evelyn sought her family’s meager library and made its towering shelves and the dusty tomes she could barely lift her home.

The early years of Evelyn’s life passed at an agonizing pace. Long, lazy summers spent sneezing between the racks turned into long, lazy winters bound up in sweaters and blankets, perched beside a roaring fire, a stack of books often ten or eleven high her only company. Her first blood came young—too young, perhaps—but Evelyn wasn’t perturbed. She’d read about the mysteries of her body long before she’d discovered the realities of those mysteries for herself, and when her turn came to cut up ragged old sheets and sew herself a belt to catch the flow of blood, she didn’t need to seek her mother’s council, and so she never did.

Her parents castigated her for her anti-social habits; her mother made it her personal mission to “draw the woman out of the girl”, as she used to say, and pushed well-born elder sons toward her sagging seat in the library, hoping one might catch her eye. They were to the one entitled, pushy, and, worst of all, dreadfully dull—Evelyn ignored them all. Eventually, her mother drew them away, despairing of her youngest child.

Then she closed the library. The books she sold, and a hefty fortune they drew. Evelyn begged her mother to bring them back, or else send her away to study at the great university in Orlais, but her mother would not relent. If Evelyn would not join the noble world and submit to being courted, she would be sent the Chantry to be vested as a Sister, her mother explained. For a daughter of such a noble house as old Trevelyan, there would be no other option. That is the way things are, and that is the way they should be.

Evelyn cried herself to sleep that night, trapped by accident of birth between the misery of an arranged marriage to one of the miserable little toads of the Ostwick noble caste, or a life spent in service to a Maker she wasn’t entirely sure she believed in.

She planned right then to escape as the brave young girls in most favored stories did—she snuck down to the larder before the cook woke to set the day’s bread and bundled up as many small cheese and rings of cured meats as she could. She crept through darkened hallways, lush Starkhave rugs soft and warm beneath her feet, and filched a pack and a sturdy traveling cloak from the man-at-arms’ storeroom.

That she might not be suited for the life of a runaway noble girl-in-hiding did not occur to her until she was clutching desperately at a rope made from her shredded bedsheets, dangling farther from the ground than she in any tree she had ever climbed, and slipped.

Evelyn plummeted to the ground like a stone thrown from the hand of an angry giant—but the wind rose to catch her. Such a gale as she had never heard, the wind grabbed at her hair, tore at clothes, and caught at her back. Gently, it lowered her to the ground, safe.

A gaping stable boy screamed and ran to tell his master, who ran to tell his master, who ran to tell Evelyn’s father.

Which is how Evelyn came to learn that magic thrummed in her veins, that she was mage, anathema, cursed with the disfavor of the Maker. She was twelve years old.

At least the Circle had a magnificent library.

 

#

 

Travel back from the Emprise took several days longer than Evelyn had anticipated. Her army—and it was _her_ army, a thing she could still not quite believe—arrived in the early hours of the morning. The great gate that barred the entrance to Skyhold creaked open, and in flowed the men, the horses, her inner circle, and herself. She begged off a meeting with Leliana, who was inexplicably awake, and snuck away to the place she most longed to visit: her library.

Evelyn’s secret library was nothing special. As libraries went, it was in fact rather small, its curved walls lined with shelves, only room enough left for an overstuffed reading chair, a side table, and a candle. But Evelyn didn’t much mind, as this library had three things going for it that no other place in Skyhold could match: its door locked, and it was full of books, and nobody knew where it was. The latter thankfully precluded need for the former, but she was glad still for a locking door that was all her own.

Evelyn settled into her chair and snapped a spark toward her candle. The wick ignited in a burst of blue flame, and soon the candle was burning merrily beside her. She leaned back against the pillow behind her. She smelled, she knew, and so desperately needed a bath, but she wanted nothing more than a brief moment alone, surrounded by her books, without anyone shouting questions at her or trying to kill her.

She pulled a book from her side table and turned it over in her lap—its spine read, _In Pursuit of Knowledge: Travels of a Chantry Scholar_. She wanted to read, really she did, but her head was so heavy, her bones beyond weary, and instead she closed her lids. She was asleep in moments.

 

#

 

Evelyn woke to the smell of horses and well-oiled leather. She blinked twice, disoriented, and fished for the book in her lap. It was then that she realized she was being carried, and the hard chest she was held against belonged to none other than her Commander. She thought to ask him to put her down, that she was grown enough at get herself to bed, but the arms holding her shoulder and supporting her legs were strong, and gentle, and warm. The Commander moved with such easy grace she hardly felt him step, and decided through her own sleep-fogged protestations, that it would be best to let him carry her, if only so he might hold her against him a few moments longer. 

She woke again when he laid her down in her bed. She opened her eyes to see him grimacing, framed by candlelight. He strained to not jostle her when he set her down. She smiled a sleepy smile and wagged her fingers at him.

His grimace broke into a small smile. “I’m sorry to wake you—I found you sound asleep in your study. Here, you’re in bed now, go back to sleep. I’ll keep Josephine away for a few hours.”

“What time is it?” Evelyn mumbled, her sleep-fogged brain grasping for a thread of normalcy in this bizarre—but not unwelcome—turn of events. 

Cullen chuckled. “We’re some hours from sunrise yet. Sleep, Evelyn. Skyhold will last a little while longer without its Inquisitor.”

Evelyn fumbled for his hand. It was warm, ungloved. His fingers were rough. She remembered briefly that she liked those fingers very much. “You too.”

“Me too what?” 

“Sleep. Idiot.”

“Oh, I don’t know that I should, there’s a report I really must—“

Evelyn tugged on his hand again, pulling it against her belly. She rolled away from him, tugging him toward the bed. “Get in before I chmfrhm,” she mumbled against her pillow. 

Cullen flexed his hand against her stomach. He made to tug it away, but she held it fast. “Fine, fine, have it your way,” he said.

He pulled off his boots and set them beside the bed. He removed his doublet (having cleaned and polished his armor several hours before) and set it folded beside his boots. He paused at his undershirt, not sure what to do. They’d shared a bed—or cot, rather—once before, but that had only happened the once. Evelyn hadn’t called him into her tent on any other night during their brief campaign, and he wasn’t entirely sure where they stood. He didn’t want to be presumptuous, but she _had_ asked him to stay. He fingered the hem, considering.

“Shirt,” Evelyn mumbled.

“Hm?”

“No shirt.”

Cullen laughed to himself and pulled his undershirt off over his head. “As you wish, Inquisitor.” 

His back and chest were striped with scars and dotted with a smattering of freckles across his broad shoulders. One of the oldest scars was also one of the largest—it snaked across his stomach in jagged, jumping lines. He absentmindedly ran a thumb over it, as he always did. How he walked away from Ferelden Circle with his life he would never quite understand, but he thanked the Maker every day that he had not died there are so many of his brothers had, begging for their lives, for their minds. 

Evelyn turned back over and reached for his hand, pulling him toward the bed. She scooted over and he climbed in beside her. She slipped into his arms and clung to his chest like a limpet.

“Shirt, please,” she said against his chest.

He breathed in the scent of her hair. She smelled like horses and dirt and lyrium, yes, all that he had said had been true, but his heart thudded with what he hadn’t said: she smelled like hope. “I’m clearly not wearing—“

“My shirt.”

Cullen thanked the Maker she couldn’t see him blush. 

Evelyn breathed against his neck and wrapped her arms about his waist. It was firm but surprisingly soft, too. Yielding in a way she didn’t expect. It was human, vulnerable. “Are you blushing, Commander?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then why did your face suddenly get so warm? Unless you have a fever, in which case I have the perfect spell—“

“I thought you were supposed to be sleeping.”

“I was. Now I’m distracted.”

Cullen smiled against her ear. “I can’t imagine why,” he whispered. His breath was warm breeze against her skin.

She shivered. “Goodness, you’re trouble.”

Cullen looked down at her, a question in his eyes. Evelyn answered by sliding her hands down the small of his back. She was physically tired, yes, but also tired of being the Inquisitor, being up on the pedestal, living every day teetering on the edge of death or dissolution. It was a terrible way to live, she’d knew, and only hoped she wouldn’t come toppling off before all this was through. She’d decided to step off the damned thing whenever she got the chance. She just wanted to be Evelyn again.

Cullen deftly reach for her back and pulled her hips flush with his. Evelyn sucked her breath in with a surprised squeak. He couldn’t keep himself from laughing. “Ah, Evelyn, I do love you.”

Evelyn’s heart stopped. She was certain she’d died. She tried to breathe, but lungs wouldn’t seem to work. Or her brain. He loved her? Like, _loved_ her? Loved _her?_

She pulled a few inches away and regarding him warily. “Did you…?”

Blush peaked his cheeks. A lock of unruly curl had fallen across his forward. “I meant what I said. I would never said such a thing if I didn’t mean it with all my heart.” 

“Cullen—,” she started.

He put a hand on her heart. It beat like a wings of tiny bird flying against a gale, swift and strong. “You needn’t say anything. But it’s important to me that you know.” His eyes shone in the candle’s low light. “These are uncertain times. If something were to happen to you—,” he stopped himself. “I am a selfish man, Evelyn. The whole of Thedas needs you, would be lost without you, but I—I would be as a dead man if something were to happen to you. Know that. Know that while everything to the people of Thedas, the Inquisitor, you’re Evelyn to me, and that I love you with my whole heart.”

The fire stoking Evelyn heart burst into towering flame, stoked by stiff, hot winds. What was love in the face of all this? Would love save the people of Thedas? No, no—she shook her hand. But love might save her.


End file.
